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“I was told there is storytelling at this hour,” he says.

His voice resonates in my gut, and I swear the green glass on the banker’s lamps rings a little when he speaks. My face goes warm, and then the rest of me follows. I have to swallow before I can say anything, which is not a problem I have. Ever.

“Story hour,” I say. “It’s for children.”

“I am new. I qualify.”

The children giggle like he just said the funniest joke ever. The orc lowers himself onto the far edge of the alphabet rug, behind the children. His knees come up to his chest, and I try not to stare at his thick thigh muscles.

He gives me his full attention. Of course I’m flushed. I’m a woman with a pulse.

I find my place again in the moon book where the cow is. I read the way I always read to them, with the voices and the faces and the cow going moo. The kids want it loud. They’re the only audience I have that does, and I’m not going to change for the stupidly sexy orc sitting on the rug.

The kids and I have a game. A few pages into every book, I stop and wait. I’ve done it every Thursday for four years, and they know exactly where it’s coming, and they still love it.

When I pause, the three children yell, “Turn the page!”

“Turn the page,” says the orc, one beat behind them, and Ivy starts giggling so hard she tips over.

Mateo says, “Read it again!” and I have to explain the rule, like I do every week, that we don’t go back. The orc nods like this is a serious rule.

I finish the book, move to one about a bear, and finally one about a bus. At every stopping place, the three children and one orc tell me to turn the page, and by the third book, he’s right on time with them.

He doesn’t move the whole time, but his shoulders are down and his hands are relaxed on his knees. When I close the last book, he lets out a long, contented breath, and his ears come forward. His ears are telling me something. I don’t know what yet.

The other parents come in to collect their kids while Hollis gets Ivy’s coat on her. Moose stretches as he wakes up from his nap, wagging his tail at everyone. On the way out, Ivy stops in front of the orc and peers at his tusks.

“Are you the storyteller?”

“I am.”

“You didn’t tell us a story.”

“Not today. Today I was told one.”

She accepts this and slips her hand into Hollis’s as they leave. Sadie and Wes leave, but Mateo pauses in the doorway.

“Are you coming next week?”

He’s looking at the orc, and I start to tell Mateo that he’s going to be too busy for story time every week, but the orc speaks first.

“Yes.”

Mateo smiles. “Good.”

Once he’s gone, it’s just me and the orc. He unfolds himself off the rug, and I once again have to force my eyes off his fine body. Okay, so it’s been several years since I’ve dated anyone. Our small town isn’t exactly swimming in eligible bachelors, but I don’t need to be this thirsty over the new visitor.

He studies Harold on the ceiling for a moment before looking around. “I’m one of the storykeepers in my clan. I carry three hundred years of stories in my head. One of us speaks every night, so the stories are not lost. Your building carries thousands. You can’t possibly read them all. How do you sleep here?”

“I don’t sleep here. I sleep at home, and not very well lately.” I put the children’s book on the cart. “And it’s around eleven thousand books.”

“Eleven thousand.” He says it slowly, and his deep tone makes me wonder how he’d sound telling a dirty story.

Yeah, I need to get away from him. I grab the returns cart and head for the stacks like I have somewhere to be. He doesn’t follow.

The ladder is my favorite thing in the building. When I’m up it I’m taller than everybody in Venn’s Crossing, which doesn’t happen to me anywhere else. I take an armful of returns up with me. The westerns go first because Birdie will be in Saturday, and she’ll know if they aren’t there, even though she’s read them all by now.

The orc walks along the bottom of the stacks. I hear him more than I see him because an orc that size doesn’t walk quietly on a hundred-year-old floor.